Mazandar
On an island to the far east, covered mostly in desert, the Kingdom of Mazandar is slowly turning outward after a decade of internal conflict. The people of Mazandar are divided into four castes. There are the soldiers, warriors in the King’s army who fight on his ships. Anyone may rise from their caste to the honor of soldier simply by volunteering their lives and pledging service to the King. Below them are the farmers who work the floodlands around the river Ankhilep that runs through Mazandar. Below them are the nomads who tend herds of sheep, camels, and other cattle, migrating from river to oases and to shore and back on their ancient cycles. There are those whom the caste system does not contain: traders, nomads who have shorn the ancient, sacred ways for a decidedly more lucrative vocation, and skilled craftsmen who are thought to be of the same high caste as farmers. Below all of these are the Djinn. The common belief is that the Djinn are people born with foul spirits inside of them, spirits that allow them to perform miracles and atrocities, commonly referred to as magic. Almost all of the Djinn are slaves that work their magic for the King, doing everything from raising buildings to producing weapons to serving as special soldiers, weapons themselves, in his navy. Precious few Djinn have peacefully achieved autonomy, and throughout Mazandar’s history, many of them have died seeking it. The most beautiful of the Djinn girls, the King may groom for his harem, but most of the Djinn are doomed to live and die as slaves. Above the castes are the gods. Mazandar has many gods, gods of the land and of the winds and of the humors, but there are three or four for whom the river runs daily with prayers. There is the river Ankhilep (An-key-lep) itself, the life-giver, whose waters they drink from and bathe in. She floods their land so they can grow their reeds and tubers, carries their boats so they can live as one, and, in the end, carries their placid bodies on. There is Ramun who fought against the Dark Moon. He brings light to the day, life to their crops, and sanity to those lost in the darkness. There is Maat, whom nobody sends prayers to, because Maat pervades the universe, separating what is what isn’t so the world may exist. It even answers the prayers that remain unspoken, so it goes. Among the gods is the God-King Sutekh (Soo-tek), ruler of Mazandar and self-proclaimed Mouth of the Gods. Now, he sits in his new alhambra in the capital of Tabar, a grand palace made to celebrate the end of the revolution as well as His own glory. He gives orders to the many advisors and officers that wait on his commands day and night, and when he is not giving orders, expanding his knowledge, or taking his leisure, he is relaying his prophecies to his trusted scribe, one of his once harem girls by the name of Irtyrau (Urt-ee-ra’oo). For the last ten years, Mazandar has been tormented with internal strife, but no more. A revolution of the castes has been quelled, and with its leaders nowhere to be found, especially one traitorous Malikosh, once general under the King, once soldier in his army, once farmer of his land, now dead or shipwrecked far from Mazandar, there is nothing stopping King Sutekh from achieving his grand visions. And his visions are grand. Visions of death and destruction, of killing and torturous things worse than immediate death. Visions of apocalypse, ushered in by a Mazandar risen to its old glory. God-King Sutekh, ruler of Mazandar, sees a world in ashes, and he wants nothing more than for his visions to come true. Category:Nations of Dirakkis